


holy darkness got a hold on me

by wayfarer



Series: demon!shane [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demon!Shane, Humor, M/M, think less the exorcist and more the good place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfarer/pseuds/wayfarer
Summary: Shane is a demon and Ryan can never, ever find out.He finds out anyway.





	holy darkness got a hold on me

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even know tbh
> 
> title from Lord Huron's "Meet Me in the Woods" because how could i not
> 
> EDIT: i know it's taking me awhile to get the next chapter out, but i AM going to finish this fic. im in my final year of college and the course load is a lot heavier than i was expecting it to be. i've also been dealing with various health issues, so i haven't had much time to write. the next chapter is coming, but i can't say with 100% certainty when. thank you for your patience and all of your kind words of encouragement!

How does one tell their best friend and coworker that they’re literally a demon from hell?

Shane has spent a frankly embarrassing amount of time theorizing and he pretty much figures telling Ryan would go one of three ways:

  1. Ryan thinks Shane is fucking with him and doesn't believe him
  2. Ryan believes Shane believes he’s a demon and Shane ends up in a mental institution somewhere
  3. Ryan believes him



He’s not sure which would be the worst. Knowing Ryan and his penchant for panic, general fear of everything even remotely supernatural and holy water, probably the latter.  

So Shane keeps on keeping on and decides that some things Ryan just doesn’t need to know. For both their sakes.  

 

Some of the locations they go to are haunted, most of them aren’t. The logistics of who turns into a ghost and who doesn’t aren’t exact. Most spirits are born from extremely violent deaths, but even then it doesn’t always happen. A true haunting is rare.

The ghost supposedly haunting this week’s location is very real. Her name was Margaret Louise Hill and her husband stabbed her to death in the basement of their home in January of 1953. He proceeded to drag her body to the bathroom, bathe her, dress her in her pajamas and place her in their bed. It took a week before the body was found and he was arrested. He killed himself in jail three days later, proclaiming his innocence. 

“The husband’s motive has never been determined, but there are several theories,” Ryan says into the camera. Despite the atrocity of what happened, the house was never torn down so they’re sitting on a couch in the living room where they’ll later be spending the night. The lady who currently owns it got it for a drastically reduced price a couple of years back and it took her exactly one month before realizing why. She moved out pretty quickly after that, but decided to keep the house. She rents it out for a couple of days at a time now to people looking for a scare. “Some believe that she was having an affair and when her husband found out, he flew into a jealous rage and killed her,” Ryan continues. “After he realized what he had done, he attempted to clean her up in remorse.”

Shane supposes he could ask her while he’s there, but it’s best to pretend he can’t see her anymore than Ryan or their camera guy Mike can. 

“Others believe that it wasn’t the husband at all, but a random intruder who murdered her. When her husband found her, the shock and horror caused him to have a psychotic break, resulting in the odd treatment of her body.” 

Nah, it was definitely the husband. Shane was still kicking it downstairs when the guy showed up. He thinks it’s pretty obvious that brutally murdering your wife will get you a one way ticket to the pit, but the guy had seemed surprised to wake up to hellfire and brimstone. 

“Regardless of who murdered her,” Ryan continues, “there’s no denying that the circumstance of her death could potentially spawn an angry spirit. There have been multiple accounts of spirit activity in the house in the years since her death, including reports of flickering lights, cold spots and objects moving without being touched.”

“Someone took Ghost 101,” Shane interjects. It takes a fair amount of effort to not look over at Margaret, who’s practically boring a hole into his skull with her staring. She can tell that there’s something not quite right about him, but it’s unlikely she has any idea what he is. She’s wearing the dress she died in, the fabric ripped in places from the stab wounds, and she’s drenched in blood from head to toe. He can’t help but feel a little guilty throwing jabs at her, but he has a role to maintain here. 

“You’re not impressed?” 

“Eh, not really.”

“Okay, I got something you might like then,” Ryan says. Shane gestures for him to go on. “So one resident back in the eighties had some pretty terrifying stories. She claimed that some nights she would wake up to the sound of a woman screaming in the basement and when she would go down to investigate, all the light bulbs would be dead.”

“She was probably just dreaming. You can never trust stories involving things that happened in the middle of the night.”

“Well, how do you explain the light bulbs?” 

“Light bulbs do burn out, Ryan,” he says. He has no doubt that Margaret managed to blow out the light bulbs. Angry spirits can conjure up enough energy to do a hell of a lot more than that sometimes. Can’t tell Ryan that, though. He wonders what Ryan would do if he told him the ghost he so desperately wants evidence of is standing less than three feet from them. 

“All at the same time?” Ryan asks incredulously. 

“Sure. Tends to happen when you forget to turn the lights off.” 

“Okay, well what about this,” he says. “Another resident that moved in during the nineties claimed that sometimes when she was taking a shower in the tub, the water would suddenly run red.” 

“Your eyes can play tricks on you. You know, I sure hope they put in a new tub.” 

Ryan sighs. “You’re the absolute worst.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Shane says, standing up. Margaret’s gaze feels hot on the back of his neck. “Let’s go exploring.” 

 

They do their usual. Spirit box, asking her to turn the flashlight on or off, asking questions about what happened. Margaret follows them from room to room, but doesn’t respond to any of Ryan’s questions or attempts to contact her. All of her focus is on Shane. He mostly avoids looking at her, making sure his gaze goes right through her when she walks into his line of sight. He also avoids talking to her directly, but he can only get away with so much. When Ryan, in an uncharacteristic moment of bravery, suggests they spend two minutes alone in the bathroom, Shane can’t really do anything but accept the challenge. 

Ryan spends his two minutes terrified out of his mind, rambling nervously before reminding himself not to invite a line of communication despite having done so all night. Shane spends his two minutes mostly talking about nothing, but he decides to turn the water in the shower on before his time is up out of curiosity. A spirit would have to be very powerful to make water run red and he didn’t think she had that kind of juice. 

By the time his two minutes are up, the water is still clear and he sighs in relief. 

The thing about ghosts is, they’re usually pretty harmless. There’s a reason why most ghost stories feature nothing more serious than flickering lights and objects falling off of counters. It takes decades for spirits to learn the whole Throwing Shit Across the Room skill and by the time they do, they’ve usually been around long enough that they’ve already started fading away into nothing. It’s only in that sweet spot of being old but not too old than shit can get hairy. 

“Well, no ghosts in there,” Shane says when he exits the bathroom. 

Margaret is standing just behind Ryan and he doesn’t mean to, but he makes eye contact with her. It’s only a split second, but it’s enough. She knows he can see her.

The next hour of filming grows progressively more stressful as Margaret tries to get his attention and he steadfastly ignores her. He can feel her frustration growing, but he can hardly stop and have a chat with her. They plan on spending the night, but the likelihood of Ryan falling asleep at any point is slim to none, so he can’t do anything but pretend she isn’t there. 

Around ten, Mike helps them set up the cameras in the living room where they’ll be sleeping. Margaret’s house is only about a thirty minute drive away and Mike had already decided to go back home instead of camping out with them. By ten thirty, he heads out, leaving the two of them alone. 

The air begins feeling thick and charged with energy as Margaret’s anger grows more and more by the minute. Ryan seems oblivious, too freaked out by fake ghost activity to notice the real ghost activity. Shane debates whether or not to knock something over so Ryan will panic and chicken out of spending the night. 

Margaret ends up making the decision for him. They’re in the kitchen, filming a few last minute shots before settling down for the night, when her anger and desperation peaks. Shane can feel a surge of energy in the room just before a decorative bird plate jerks off the wall opposite of where they’re standing and goes flying straight at Ryan. 

Without thinking, Shane jerks his hand to the left, changing the path of the plate midair. It smashes into the wall a few inches to the left of Ryan’s head, the shattered pieces falling to the floor. 

There’s a brief second of total silence before all hell breaks loose. The room temperature drops ten degrees as all the energy in the room is sucked out along with Margaret herself, the action having sapped all of her power. Ryan drops his camera and starts screaming so loud that Shane wouldn’t be surprised if Mike could hear him all the way from home. In his panic, Ryan jerks backwards against the wall and his legs start to give out. He’s a second away from falling onto a pile of shattered ceramic, so Shane drops his own camera and grabs him by the tops of his arms, yanking him upwards. Or, he tries to. Ryan’s weight ends up pulling both of them to the floor. Shane darts his left hand out to brace himself and ends up slicing his palm open on one of the jagged pieces of plate. 

“Ouch, shit!”

“Oh my god, oh my fucking god,” Ryan yells, his voice hitting an octave that makes Shane wince. He starts scrambling to stand up, a process made infinitely more difficult with Shane practically lying on top of him. He finally manages to get on his feet, hauling Shane up with him. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!”

Margaret’s not coming back anytime soon, if at all, after that little trick but Ryan looks like he’s a second away from passing out and Shane’s starting to feel his heartbeat in his hand. “What about the equipment?”

“Are you crazy? Fuck the equipment!”

With that, Ryan grabs him by the arm and practically hauls him out the front door, Shane doing his best not to trip over his many lanky limbs. They burst out the front door, down the stairs and onto the street at a speed Shane didn’t think either of them were physically capable of. There’s no one around at this time of night, so they take a second to catch their breath without worrying about a car hitting them.

Ryan looks over and his eyes bug out when he notices Shane’s hand, which has now started dripping blood onto the concrete. It looks nearly black in the scarce lighting of the street. “Oh fuck, you’re bleeding!” Ryan says, making a grab for Shane’s hand. 

He tries to pull it out of reach, but Ryan is surprisingly quick to grab his wrist considering his hands are shaking with adrenaline and fear. His face pales considerably as he takes in the mess that is Shane’s palm. 

“Hey, I’m fine. Just a little scratch.”

Ryan shoots him a “What the fuck, are you fucking crazy?” look that Shane has gotten used to being on the receiving end of and drops his wrist long enough to wrestle out of the blue and black flannel he’s wearing over his t-shirt. The press of the soft, warm fabric against his torn flesh hurts like hell. He sucks in a sharp breath, biting back a curse. 

“Here, put pressure on this.”

Once Shane has the fabric pressed against the wound, Ryan starts patting down his pockets. It only takes a second for him to determine that whatever he’s looking for isn’t there and his already pale face manages to grow paler. “Fuck! My keys are inside.” 

“I’ll go in and get them.” Shane needs to get inside and he needs to get inside now. He doesn’t know how much of what happened they caught on camera or if they’re even still working after they dropped them on the floor, but he has to get to them before Ryan does. 

“No,” Ryan says immediately. His voice shakes, but he’s got that look of determination on his face that means Shane isn’t going to get his way. “No, you’re hurt. I’ll get them. They’re just in the living room.”

“Ryan – ” he starts to protest, but Ryan is already heading toward the house. There are no lights on inside and they didn’t close the front door when they ran out, so it sits open like a cavernous mouth, dark and intimidating. Ryan hesitates for just a second before walking through the door frame. 

He’d be impressed by Ryan’s resolve if he wasn’t currently seeing his life as he knows it flash before his eyes. Ryan didn’t see what he did, that much he knows. Shane was subtle, he’s always subtle when he uses his powers, and Ryan wasn’t even looking in his direction when it happened. But was he pointing his camera in Shane’s direction? He can’t remember. Probably not, but probably not is not good enough. He needs those cameras, but his hand is killing him and he can’t think beyond his own panic.

Before Shane can come up with a plan that doesn’t involve knocking Ryan out – which, not his best work – Ryan comes out, keys in hand. He stops long enough to lock the front door with the guest key they were given when they arrived. He doesn’t run from the house this time, but there’s a briskness to his pace that suggests he’s worried something might reach out and grab him.

“Come on, get in,” he says, unlocking the car with the key fob. “Hospital.”

He’s still got that look on his face that leaves no room for argument. 

Shane gets in the car. 

 

The nearest hospital is a ten minute drive away. Even at midnight, there’s still people on the road because there’s always people on the road around here, but not enough to cause traffic. They coast easily forward, not saying a word. Shane doesn’t know what to say. There is absolutely no way he can talk his way out of this situation. He can’t blame it on the wind or the house settling or fucking raccoons. Those lines don’t work on Ryan even when it is one of them. There is no denying what just happened and no way to convince Ryan what he saw isn’t actually what he saw. 

Shane cannot believe this is happening. Not once in all the places they've gone has he ever allowed something like this to happen. It’s not like he’s been actively preventing Ryan from gathering evidence, per se, but he also has been very careful in making sure that the ghosts they do come across don’t hurt anyone. Most of them aren’t able to, but the ones that are he’s quick to deal with. He could have handled Margaret with no problem, but he seriously underestimated her.

Jesus, what a mess. 

“Hey Shane?” Ryan’s voice sounds startling loud in the silence of the car. His knuckles are white from how hard he’s holding onto the steering wheel, but his voice is no longer shaking. 

“Yeah?”

“That plate flew off the wall.”

“Yeah.”

“Not fell. Actually flew off the wall. Like someone threw it.”

“Yeah.”

Ryan watches the road and Shane watches Ryan. 

After a moment of silence, Ryan says, “Holy fuck.”

Shane looks out the window, unease settling like a stone in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Holy fuck.” 

 

Tonight sucks. Emergency waiting rooms suck and ghosts suck and ugly ceramic plates suck, but above all else, pretending to be human sucks. Shane’s going to have to spend weeks with an itchy, gross flesh wound that he could heal in a second all because Ryan saw how bad the cut is. Jesus, it’s going to be a nightmare trying to use his laptop now. 

Shane can’t help but let out an irritated sigh, which draws Ryan’s attention. 

Ryan has been uncharacteristically silent since they arrived at the hospital. Shane always thought if Ryan ever got legitimate proof of a ghost he’d never shut up about it. He thought there would be gloating and smugness and maybe a billboard. At the very least he thought he’d get an “I told you so.” Shane guesses the nearly getting concussed with a bird plate and the subsequent emergency room trip has taken some of the excitement out of it. Also, these chairs are seriously uncomfortable. His ass is starting to go numb. 

Yeah, tonight sucks. 

“You okay?”

“I’m fine, Ryan.”

“Maybe you won’t have to get stitches.”

Shane unwraps Ryan’s ruined flannel from around his hand and squeezes his fingers into a fist. Blood immediately starts flowing from the jagged cut, pooling in the palm of his hand and running down his fingers. A few drops fall onto his jeans, soaking into the material. Yeah, stitches are definitely in his immediate future. 

“Jesus, don’t do that,” Ryan says, looking a little green. He grabs the bloody flannel and starts rewrapping. Instead of giving Shane his hand back once he’s done, he sandwiches it between his own and puts pressure on the wound himself. His hands are perfectly steady. 

Not for the first time, Shane finds himself weirdly proud of this little human he’s stumbled across. Shane likes people in general, sure, but it took him by surprise how much he likes this one in particular. And yeah, okay. He’ll admit, it was the irony of the situation that first attracted Shane to both Ryan and the show. Ryan searching for ghosts and demons with one unknowingly right by his side? That shit is gold. But it’s more than that now. He genuinely likes Ryan, who’s so terrified of the places they go Shane can smell his fear from three rooms away, who still continuously puts himself through terrifying experiences to get evidence for what he’s so desperate to prove. So, yeah. Shane likes Ryan and he likes the way things are now. Ryan, dragging his ass to dank and dusty places that almost always aren’t haunted. Shane, making sure ghosts don’t kill Ryan with bird plates when they are haunted, all the while vehemently protesting the existence of things that go bump in the night. Things are good the way they are. 

He needs to get those fucking cameras. 

Ryan’s hands might be steady where they’re clasped around Shane’s, but he’s still sweaty and pale. Shane abruptly feels like an asshole. He’s been so caught up in his own thoughts that he’s left Ryan to deal with the revelation that not only are ghosts real, but that one almost seriously hurt him.

“Hey, are  _ you _ okay?” he asks, bumping Ryan’s shoulder with his own. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Ryan’s face twists up and Shane thinks  _ oh, fuck _ , but then he chokes out laughter. It’s a little too loud and there’s an edge of hysteria to it, but it’s laughter nonetheless. He’ll take it. 

“You know what?” Ryan asks through his laughter, that patented wheeze making an appearance. “I did see a ghost and when you’re no longer bleeding to death you are getting the biggest fucking ‘I told you so’ in the history of ‘I told you sos.’”

“Fair enough. And I’m not bleeding to death.”

“Tell that to my poor flannel,” he jokes, but the amusement slowly dries up, leaving him with a sober expression. “I’ve always known that what we’re doing is dangerous but, I don’t know. Nothing bad has happened for so long that I think I forgot. Maybe you aren’t bleeding to death, but you are hurt and I could have sworn that plate was coming right at my head for a second. If it had gone a little more to the left – ” 

“Hey, don’t think about that,” Shane interrupts. “We’re fine. Everything is fine.” 

“Shane, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be thinking about that for the rest of my life.” 

Yeah, that sounds about right. He wonders if this is it for the show, regardless of whether or not they caught everything on camera. It’s true that what they’re doing is dangerous, but Shane’s never been worried about it because he always thought he would be able to stop anything bad from happening. He got too sure of himself, he made one mistake and now everything has gone to shit. Ryan got a first hand look at exactly how bad things can go and for all he wants proof, Shane knows him well enough to know he isn’t going to put them at risk to get it.  

Yeah, this might be it. He’s a little surprised by how bad that makes him feel.  

“We dropped the cameras. They’re probably broken and this would all be for nothing.”

I can fucking dream, he thinks, even as he feels bad at how dejected Ryan sounds. “I’m sorry, man.”

“I’ll call Mike, let him know what’s going on,” Ryan says, though he makes no move to pull his phone out. “We can go sometime tomorrow to pick up the equipment, see if we got anything.”

“Sure,” Shane says. He’ll go back to the house tonight then, after they’re done here. Ryan has the keys, but he’ll have to go in through a window to avoid the cameras in the living room anyway. He’ll check to see if the cameras are broken and if they aren’t, well. Even if Ryan’s camera didn’t catch what Shane did, Shane’s camera most definitely caught a plate changing direction in midair. It’s safer if it all goes. 

Another ten minutes go by before a tired looking doctor finally calls Shane’s name. Ryan offers to come back with him, but Shane reassures him he’ll be fine. “Call Mike, make a game plan.”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, slumping down in his seat. “I’ll do that.”

 

It’s nearing three in the morning when they finally pull up outside of Shane’s apartment building, Shane with eight stitches in his palm and both of them with bags under their eyes. He’s exhausted in a way he usually isn’t unless he’s stayed up for days at a time and all he wants to do is crawl into bed and sleep for two days. Mike, who believes in ghosts about as little as Shane pretends to, was worried but skeptical when Ryan told him what went down. He’s eager to see what they caught on camera, so the plan is go back over to the house at ten tomorrow morning to get all the equipment.

“Can you get inside okay?” Ryan asks, looking more exhausted that Shane thinks he’s ever seen him. Normally, he would offer for Ryan to crash on his couch so he doesn’t have to drive so late, but not tonight. 

“Yeah, I got it,” he says, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You too. I’ll swing by and pick you up in the morning.”

“Sounds good.” 

Ryan waits long enough to see Shane start up the stairs before driving away. 

He has every intention of changing out of his clothes and immediately going back to the house as he heads up the stairs, but he’s so tired by the time he reaches his front door that he decides to take a nap first. He can sleep for two or three hours and still have time to go and get back before Ryan comes to pick him up.

He strips out of his bloody clothes, leaving them in the bathroom to deal with later. He crawls into bed, sets an alarm for six on his phone and passes out just a few seconds later. 

 

It feels like he just shut his eyes when his alarm goes off, jolting him awake. He feels around on his nightstand for his phone, knocking over a half empty water bottle in the process. He finds it after a few seconds, the brightness of the screen making him wince. As he turns the alarm off, he sees he has a text from Ryan. It’s from an hour ago and says,  _ Hey, I couldn’t wait. I went back and got the equipment. The cameras are shot, we didn’t catch anything. I’ll see you at work Monday.  _

Relief hits him like a punch in the gut. Thank fucking god. 

_ Sorry man _ , he sends back.  _ See you at work. _

He rolls over and goes back to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> so originally i was going to wait and publish this when it was completely done, but i have no self control so here we are. i'm aiming to post the next chapter within a week or two, but im taking summer classes for college, so there's always the possibility i'll be a little late.
> 
> anyway, this was a lot of fun writing and i hope you guys enjoy it!
> 
> also, come hang out with me on tumblr at ~~oliverhamptoned~~ [ghoulbuddies](http://www.ghoulbuddies.tumblr.com)


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